By Dave Elwing, Secretary and Development Committee Chair
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s March 2023 Newsletter edition.
It’s NESTING SEASON! Have you cleaned out your wood duck boxes or mallard nesting tubes? If we believe the groundhog (which we all know can’t really be trusted), spring is around the corner. The advance guard of nature’s reverse migration is already on our doorstep. Geese are back. I’m seeing more mallards, and of course, sandhills are trumpeting. I have not seen any wood ducks yet, but they cannot be far behind.
If you haven’t done it already, get out there and make sure last year’s eggs are cleaned out of your boxes and fresh bedding is put inside. Do any repairs that need to be done. Get rid of unwanted guests, be they screech owls (the hole might be too big), squirrels or mice (consider using a predator guard), or wasp nests – I had a paper wasp nest that filled two-thirds of one of my boxes… sure glad that I check boxes during late January!
Wood duck boxes are available through the WWA website. Assembled boxes can be purchased for $45.00; kits can be had for $35.00 (step-by-step assembly instructions can be downloaded for free). If you are a do-it-yourselfer, the Wisconsin Outdoors News annually publishes a set of WWA-approved wood duck box plans (you can do a google search and find them, also). The bottom line is, “Get out there and get those boxes up and ready!
A number of our chapters host annual box clean-out and installation days. Midland Wings (West Bend area/Washington County) added twenty boxes to their previous boxes in neighboring Dodge County’s Theresa Marsh. The day was picture perfect… sunny, no wind, mild temps after a week of single digit evenings and 12”-15” of snow. Sixteen volunteers came out, including a couple of families, one spanning three generations. By working with the DNR’s Marsh Management team, Midland Wings secured permission to use UTVs to move boxes, posts, post drivers, ice augers, and step ladders. Two teams put in new boxes while a third team checked 2022’s success rates in the existing boxes. While last year’s boxes showed 100% usage rate, three were used by screech owls – not necessarily what we want, but it all adds up to benefitting nature – like the rest of the habitat that WWA improved. The screech owl boxes were on dead ash trees in the woods, perhaps moving the boxes into the open will result in them being used by wood ducks, too. Midland Wings’ other boxes hatched wood ducks and one brood of hooded mergansers. Reach out to Dave Elwing ([email]dwelwing@rcn.com[/email]) or Ryan Mueller ([email]gooseman003@gmail.com[/email]) to help Midland Wings next year or to participate in any other upcoming chapter events. Check the WWA social media outlets for other chapters and their events.
If you bought wood duck boxes from WWA in the past or plan to do so in the future, our Habitat Committee has a request: please send your results to them. The information desired for tracking is the number of boxes, success rate per box (number of hatches, number of unhatched eggs, was it used as a dump box), what species used the box, and which county the box is located in. The information can be sent to the Habitat Committee Chair, B.J. Grassmann, at [email]grassmannbj@gmail.com[/email]. Thanks in advance.
We encourage you to keep an eye of your boxes and nesting tubes during spring and summer to see if they get used and by whom. It’s a great time to raise interest in conservation and nature when the weather is mild. At least one of the Midland Wings youngsters already asked his dad and granddad if they were coming back next spring to check on “their boxes.” That’s what I call a success story.
